Next Steps in Syria: A Dutch View

European Union foreign ministers agreed to tighten sanctions Friday on the people around President Bashar al-Assad, including his wife who is a British citizen. What now?

Speaking after the meeting in an interview in Brussels, Uri Rosenthal, the Dutch Foreign Minister, outlined three main approaches to further increase the pressure on the regime while former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan plows on with his peace mission.

Extend the sanctions to other members of the Assad clan and persuade other countries to join the sanctions effort.

Encourage defections.

Provide communications and other equipment to the opposition.

On sanctions, he said the efforts should focus on the regime and avoid, where possible, hurting a population already suffering. “We are not only talking about the wife and family members of Assad we are also talking about extending the sanctions to other members of his clan. The whole story is about squeezing and isolating the regime.

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“What we are looking for is continuously refine and sharpen sanctions to give them teeth.”

The effort to bring more countries on board with sanctions could advance, he said, with the second meeting of the “Friends of Syria” group, scheduled for April 1 in Istanbul, which follows the first such gathering in Tunis in February. Russia and China boycotted the Tunis meeting, but Mr. Rosenthal said: “We should be keen on getting the Russians and the Chinese, but especially the Russians, on board.”

Mr. Rosenthal said some defections have already taken place, and some European officials say the Assad regime has detained family members of potential senior defectors

“We have to encourage defections by military men, by intelligence people, by bureaucratic officials, civil servants also on the part of businessmen, and we have to be operational about it… diplomats too. We have to plan for that,” Mr. Rosenthal said.

Defectors “should be received with sympathy and support. Of course when you say to people that we would encourage defections, we have to take account of their safety and security and also that of their families.”

He suggested Libya could act as a template, for example to encourage Syrian pilots to defect. “At a certain moment in the conflict in Libya, we encouraged, for instance, air force pilots of the Libyan air force to defect. Then you have literally to be protective of them when they get to an airport outside of their country, they have to be accepted and assured that they won’t be sent back.”

Mr. Rosenthal said the Netherlands opposed sending in weapons to aid the opposition in Syria. But other material would help more.

He said his and other European governments want to “help opposition forces as much as we can, not with arms and other military instruments, but with what they are dearly longing for: communications facilities, to be very practical, laptops, technological devices to secure their access to the Internet for communication among themselves and communication with the outside world.”

“As one member of the opposition said, we can’t fight them with our weapons; we will lose. But we can fight them on the Internet.”

Comments (1 of 1)

it is already one year since Assad gangs started shooting protesters .. 380 days .. and the cowards who are in leadership in the EU and White House are still talking and doing nothing to stop the mass murder .. it is despicable cowardice plain and simple ..

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The Wall Street Journal’s Brussels blog is produced by the Brussels bureau of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. The bureau has been headed since 2009 by Stephen Fidler, who was previously a correspondent and editor for the Financial Times and Reuters. Also posting regularly: Matthew Dalton, Viktoria Dendrinou, Tom Fairless, Naftali Bendavid, Laurence Norman, Gabriele Steinhauser and Valentina Pop.